PART II. their name and their bones the same sepulchre shall suffice'!' CHAP. V. And his trumpet note of defiance had been echoed by almost every Humanist since the poet's time. traces of tion to the the Humanists at Cam Petrarch at house. Among the earliest indications that the new thought in Earliest Italy was beginning to be a matter of interest to Cambridge some attenscholars, is the presence of a copy of Petrarch's letters in the writings of original catalogue of the library of Peterhouse, of the year bridge. 1426, referred to in preceding chapters'. A few years later we find Ottringham, who preceded William de Melton as master of Michaelhouse, borrowing a copy of Petrarch's well-known treatise De Remediis utriusque Fortuna. The manuscript A treatise by was the property of one Robert Alne, who, in his will dated Michael24 December, 1440, directs that Ottringham shall be allowed to retain possession of the volume during his lifetime, after which it is to become the property of the university, along with other works directly bequeathed by the testator3. In the catalogue of the university library drawn up in 1473, of which some account has been given in a preceding chapter1, we accordingly find the treatise in question among the volumes enumerated, though it is not one of those few that have been preserved down to the present time. We have no evidence that Fisher ever read this treatise, but the fact that it had been borrowed from the owner by a former master of Michaelhouse, shews that there were some among the influential members of the university who were beginning to take an interest in the writings of the Humanists. Perhaps after the volume had been deposited in the common library, and had been duly chained as No. 57 in its appointed place, other students were occasionally to be found intent upon its pages, contrasting its comparatively pure Latinity with the uncouth diction to which they were more accustomed, or—as vague rumours of great battles reached the half-deserted university, while Red and White were contending for the 1 'Respice hos, qui in altercationibus et cavillationibus sophisticis totum vitæ tempus expendunt seque inanibus semper quaestiunculis exagitant, et præsagium meum de omnibus habeto: omnium nempe cum ipsis fama corruet, unum sepulchrum nomini ossibusque sufficiet!' Epist. 2 See supra, pp. 324, 370. 3 See Paper by Mr. Bradshaw in Caius Aube rinus lec tures on Terence in the univer sity. CHAP. V. mastery,-gathering consolation from the placid stoicism PART II. preached by the great Florentine. If to such rare indications as the foregoing, we add that there was an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, resident in the university, writing Latin letters on formal occasions for a fee of twenty pence each, and also giving by permission a Terence lecture in vacation time1, we shall have before us nearly all the existing evidence that, with the commencement of the sixteenth century, may be held to shew that there was at Cambridge a certain minority, however small, to whom it seemed that the prevalent Latinity was not altogether irreproachable, and who were conscious that a new literature was rising up which might ere long demand attention, even to the displacement of some of the scholastic writers and medieval theologians. Fisher at court. He attracts the notice mother, Mar garet, coun mond. Baker's ac count of her ancestry. We have already mentioned the election of Fisher to the senior proctorship in the year 1494. The duties of the office at that time appear to have involved occasional attendance at court, and in his official capacity Fisher was sent of the king's down to Greenwich where, the royal court was frequently tess of Rich- held. It was on this occasion that he was introduced to the notice of the king's mother, the munificent and pious countess of Richmond. 'I need say nothing,' says Baker in his History of St. John's College, rising to unwonted eloquence as he recalls the proud lineage of the foundress of his house,'I need say nothing of so great a name: she was daughter of John Beaufort duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, and so descended from Edward the Third; consort of Edmund Tudor earl of Richmond, son of Catharine of France, and so allied to the crown of France; and mother of Henry the Seventh, king of England, from whom all our kings of England, as from his elder daughter Margaret, who bore her name, all the kings of Scotland, are ever since descended. And though she herself was never a queen, yet her son, if he had any lineal title to the crown, as he derived it from her, so at her death she had thirty kings and queens all ed to her within the fourth degree either of blood or affinity, and since her death she has been allied in her posterity> thirty 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 240; Athenæ, 1 9. PART II. Fisher ap Her charac ter. more'. This august lady appears to have at once recog- CHAP. V. nised in Fisher an ecclesiastic after her own heart, and in the year 1497 he was appointed her confessor. It was an aus- pointed her picious conjunction for Cambridge; for to the wealth and confessor. liberality of the one and the enlightened zeal and disinterestedness of the other, the university is chiefly indebted for that new life and prosperity which soon after began to be perceptible in its history. As this honourable lady,' says Lewis, 'was a person of great piety and devotion, and one who made. it the whole business of her life to do good, and employed the chief part of her noble fortune for that purpose, this her confessor, who was a man of the same excellent spirit, soon became very dear to her, and entirely beloved by her. Thus Mr Fisher, a good while after, very gratefully remembers her affection towards him. He styles her an excellent and indeed incomparable woman, and to him a mistress most dear upon many accounts; whose merits whereby she had obliged him were very great?.' ed ViceChancellor, of the lady Professor ship, 1503. His promotion at court served still further to recommend Fisher electFisher to the favour of his university, and in the year 1501, 1501. when he had already commenced D.D., he was elected vicechancellor. In the same year that the countess appointed Foundation him her confessor (though how far her design is attributable Margaret to his influence is uncertain) we find her obtaining a royal licence for the establishment of a readership in divinity in each university; and a course of lectures on the Quodlibeta of Duns Scotus, given by one Edmund Wilsford in the common divinity schools at Oxford3, and certain payments made for the delivery of a similar course at Cambridge', are sufficient evidence that the scheme was forthwith carried into effect. The final regulations however, in connexion with each readership, do not appear to have been given before the year 1503, when the deed of endowment was executed. In 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 55. 2 Lewis, Life of Fisher, 1 5. 3 Edmund Wylsford, doctor of divinity and fellow of Oriel College, began to read this lecture on the morrow after the Trinity, ann. 1497.' Wood-Gutch, 11 828–9. 4 Cooper, Annals, 1 247. 5 The countess, according to Wood, 'for several years maintained a reader without any settled revenue on him and his successors. At length making a formal foundation according to law by her charter, bearing date on PART II. entrusted to Westminster. attached to the office. CHAP. V. the absence of any assigned motive, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons that led the foundress to entrust the management of the revenues set apart for the readers' salaries to other than the academic authorities. The lax morality of the age in financial matters, the frequent instances. of maladministration in the different colleges, and the poverty of the university, would hardly fail to suggest the possibility, if not the probability, of misapplication of the funds. If however there was one corporate body in England that from feelings of gratitude towards the countess, from its The revenues reputation for sanctity, and its enormous wealth, might be the abbey of supposed superior to such temptations, it was the great abbey of Westminster; and to this society the administration of the estates and the payment of the salaries were enThe salary trusted'. The salary of the reader must have seemed a liberal one in those days, for it amounted yearly to £13. 6s. 8d.; it was, that is to say, more than three times that of the Rede lectureships (founded twenty years later), considerably more than that of any of the parochial livings in Cambridge, and nearly equal to the entire yearly revenue of the priory of St. Edmund or to a third of that of St. Catherine's Hall. As so considerable an endowment might be expected to command the best talent of the university, and as the instruction was to be entirely gratuitous, the theological students must have looked upon the newly-created chair as no slight boon, and it is deserving of notice that the regulations laid down seem to have been singularly well adapted for guarding The subjects against a perfunctory discharge of the specified duties. Each the lecturer reader was bound to read in the divinity schools libere, solto the sanc- leniter, et aperte, to every one thither resorting, without fee or other reward than his salary, such works in divinity as the chancellor or vicechancellor with the 'college of doctors,' should judge necessary, for one hour, namely from seven to eight in the morning, or at such other time as the chancellor chosen by to be subject tion of the authorities. the Feast of the Nativity of the lands and revenues) to pay to the PART II. A lecture to every legible and also in cation. Lent to be preaching. or vicechancellor should think fit. He was to read every CHAP. V. accustomed day in each term, and in the long vacation up to the eighth of September, but to cease in Lent, if the chan- be given cellor should think fit, in order that during that season he and day in term, his auditors might be occupied in preaching. He was not to the long vacease from reading in any term for more than four days, The time of unless licensed for reasonable cause, to be approved by the given to chancellor or vicechancellor and major part of the doctors of divinity, such licence not to extend to more than fourteen days, and his place to be supplied in the mean time by a sufficient deputy to be paid by him. The election was to The election take place biennially, on the last day of the term before the and vested in long vacation, in the assembly house, the electors being the inceptors, chancellor or vicechancellor, and all doctors, bachelors, and lots of diviinceptors in divinity, both seculars and regulars (having been regents in arts), who were to swear to choose the most worthy, without favour, partiality, reward, fear, or sinister affection'. to be biennial, the doctors. and bache nity. first profes sor. It can be a matter of little surprise that the choice of the Fisher the first election to the lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity fell upon John Fisher. By the regulations given in 1503, it was provided however that the reader, if elected to the office either of chancellor or vicechancellor, should vacate his chair within a month from the time of such election. With the new academic year, Fisher accordingly resigned the office, and Cosin, master of Corpus, was elected in his stead. Cosin, His succesat the expiration of two years, was succeeded by Burgoyne, afterwards master of Peterhouse, and he in turn by Desiderius Erasmus. sors. the art and preaching at The clause in the second provision, directing that lectures Neglect of shall be discontinued during Lent, in order that both the practice of reader and his class may devote themselves to preaching, is this period. deserving of special note as the corollary to the main object of the lectureship. The revival and cultivation of pulpit oratory of a popular kind had for a long time past been strongly urged by the most eminent reformers both at home and abroad. Nearly a hundred years before, Nicholas de 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 271–2, |